The Spreading Plague
by Wossname
Summary: A carrier of the T-Virus has escaped the Raccoon City quarantine and has made its way to the nearby town of Bison, where the virus spreads.
1. The Beginning

Pete Riley, sheriff of the small city Bison (just ten miles south of Raccoon City), was watching TV. He had somewhere around fifty potato chips carefully arranged on his belly in order of size.  
Pete had nearly finished watching the latest episode of Buffy Vampire Slayer when he saw something outside his window on the street. It was a man, lurching as if in pain. The man was covered with blood, consumed in the shadows of the thick trees that grew in Pete's neighborhood.  
Pete stood, potato chips falling, cascading down his belly. He ran to the phone and called the station. Two rings.  
Selma, the secretary, answered, "Bison police department, how can I direct your call?"  
"Selma," Pete said, talking faster than normal, "call the hospital and have them send an ambulance to my house. I've got a guy who looks really hurt out here."  
He could imagine Selma's annoying head bob of a nod. "Right away sir."  
Pete hung up before she could say goodbye. He ran outside, shirtless. The man was on the opposite side of the road.  
Pete crossed his yard quickly. He crossed the street not even bothering to look for traffic.  
"Hey!" he called.  
The man turned. He didn't so much look at Pete as he did start after him. His arms were held loosely in front of him like from some cheap zombie movie. Pete briefly wished he'd gotten his gun when he saw the man's face.  
The eyes were bloodshot. Pete always recognized the eyes first. But the head was.crimson with blood. The man was bald, and just above his left ear there was a hole that sloshed blood when he moved. His right cheek had a hole in it that looked eaten. Blood had long since dried on the man's torn shirt and on his face.  
"Look," said Pete, trying to fight back the urge to vomit, "I just called the ambulance. They'll be here any second. Why don't you just sit down? I've got some bandages in the house."  
Bandages would do no good. The man was close to Pete now.  
"Are you OK? Where are you from?" Pete was just trying to make conversation.  
He didn't realize that the man was trying to touch him until the man's hand grabbed onto his shoulder. The grip was impossibly strong. For a moment, Pete thought the man wanted to hug him. Then the grip tightened and Pete felt the man's index finger and thumb touch through his flesh. He was bleeding. The pain was intense.  
Then the man pulled them together and pain erupted further as the man sank his teeth into Pete's neck.  
  
I hate my job.  
Sam Dodgeson was an ambulance driver, and he hated it. The late night calls. Driving through dark woods. The blood of the victims. The victims that never made it.  
And he hated the threat from Raccoon City, so close. It wasn't that there was anything formal. But the Umbrella Corporation had warned the Bison Hospital staff that there might be some patients that had to be.put down. The cannibals, to be precise. They had contracted a rare virus. There was no official record of it, thank you. Just kill the cannibals.  
Sam thought it was bull shit. It was. How would Umbrella know about it while the government didn't. Of course, in this part of the world, Umbrella was the government. Controlled just about everything. Bastards.  
Sam was also a good friend of Pete Riley. They ended up seeing each other on crime scenes too often. And they both liked to drink. So when the call had come in that Pete had someone who was hurt over at his place, Sam had been the first to volunteer.  
He was nearing Pete's house, now. It was dark, and the dense forest made it more so. There was but a sliver of moon concealed behind a shroud of dead clouds, and this cast pale, ethereal light upon the road.  
Onto Pete, standing in the road, covered in blood.  
Sam slammed the breaks on but he couldn't avoid his friend. Pete flew onto the hood, into the windshield. Sam just sat there in shock. The windshield had cracked and splintered, showering glass onto him. His face was badly cut.  
"What the fuck happened?" asked one of the paramedics.  
Pete was on the windshield, and his blood dripped through the cracked windshield. He looked at Sam, and Sam saw hate there.  
Then a hand punched through the driver's window, grabbing Sam's arm. The hand was followed by a strange face, that bit hard into the meat of Sam's arm.  
The cannibals.  
"Holy fuck!" Sam screamed. By then one of the paramedics was up front. Sam wasn't happy to see that it was one of Umbrella's "interns."  
"Son of a bitch," said the paramedic, "you got out." Sam had the feeling that he was addressing the stranger at his arm. He was trying, futilely, to wrench his arm free, but that only resulted in more flesh tearing from his bone, and into the man's gullet.  
And Pete punched through the windshield, falling onto the paramedic. Pete  
(why pete?)  
gnawed on the paramedic's shoulder, and the paramedic started screaming. Another paramedic was there, with a fire extinguisher, beating Pete in the head with it. Sam wanted to tell him to stop, but he was feeling dizzy. His struggles had long since ceased, and now the man was through the window and gnawing at his belly.  
Why me? 


	2. The Survivor

Thomas Shore stumbled through the woods. He was alive.  
The woods were dark, and littered with leaves. He throbbed from countless bruises he had suffered over the past two days, but, thankfully, he had no cuts. No slashes. No bites.  
He was alive.  
And so was the zombie. He'd been chasing it for the past five hours. Somehow it had led him around the army brigade that was enforcing the Raccoon City Quarantine. Somehow it had led him through the woods, feeding off of small rodents that had forced him to use half the shots in his magazine.  
Shore had spent a year in Vietnam before the war ended, and that had prepared him for the horrors of Raccoon City, and the survival of those horrors. He'd stockpiled weapons and ammo in his apartment, outwitting his landlord. He'd done it as a hobby, but it had come in handy.  
Now all he had was a pump-action shotgun with two shells and a 9mm handgun with half a clip left. And he had to stop that son of a bitch before it got to Bison. Already the roads were getting wider.  
The pale shadow of the moon hung over the road that the zombie had taken to over the past two hours. Shore had seen it but once, shot it in the back, but since then all he'd seen were its bloody footprints. And he'd been jogging the whole way.  
A light from a nearby house shone through the thick forest, and Shore cursed-he'd been too late. He rounded a corner and saw the house. It was empty. There were no obvious marks of abuse.  
Then he saw the ambulance. Its windshield was completely shattered and spattered with blood. Redness corrupted the black of the street's paving beneath. A single man-shaped silhouette stood motionless next to it.  
Shore didn't bother thinking about ethics. He saw two more houses down the road-those had been broken into. He unholstered his handgun and fired once. A geyser of red flew from the figure's head, and then it collapsed.  
Shore started to jog. He reholstered his handgun and checked that his shotgun was firmly strapped to his back and that his first aid kit was at his side. He jogged faster. He could make it to the center of town before the zombies, and he could fight his way through them. 


End file.
